Favorite Teams

Fans take pictures as players line the field at Fenway Park in Boston, Friday, April 4, 2014, during opening day ceremonies prior to a baseball game between the Boston Red Sox and the Milwaukee Brewers. (AP Photo/Elise Amendola)

While we love our professional sports teams here in Massachusetts, I think we can also all admit that getting to the Boston Garden, Fenway Park, or Foxboro Stadium can be challenging. The Massachusetts Bus Association (MassBus) is a cooperative association of private bus companies established to promote and advance bus transportation in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. Our members include companies providing intercity, commuter, airport, shuttle, contract, charter, and tour bus services. One service a number of our members offer their customers is sports packages. These packages bundle tickets purchased by the company ahead of time with their transportation services, providing fans with a carefree experience and our members with another significant source of revenue for their businesses.

Unfortunately, a rise in restricted ticketing practices is interfering with our ability to continue to provide these services to our customers. Restricted or ‘paperless’ tickets are increasingly used across the country and require presenting a credit card and photo identification at the venue by the original ticket purchaser making it difficult or impossible to transfer tickets. If tickets are transferable, the original buyer has a convoluted process to go through in order to pass their ticket to someone else.

The sports package business model relies on our ability to acquire unrestricted tickets on behalf of customers who subsequently purchase them as part of our package. If tickets become non-transferrable, our members will no longer be able to facilitate service packages to Boston or Foxboro that include sporting events.

The purpose of this practice is to impede scalpers from taking advantage of eager fans willing to pay for potentially fake tickets on the street. While we certainly respect the efforts to address this public policy concern, the use of restricted tickets creates more problems for consumers and affiliated businesses than it solves. Is it fair to solve one public policy concern while creating a new set of policy issues for other segments of the population?

Aside from providing logistical solutions for individuals and groups hoping to see their favorite players in-person, providing these sports packages also ensures that fans will have a safe and experienced driver behind the wheel.

Luckily there is legislation being considered on Beacon Hill that can avoid this increase of restricted ticketing here in Massachusetts. Senate Bill 94, An Act reforming the issuance and sale of sports and entertainment tickets, seeks to guarantee consumers the option of receiving an unrestricted ticket and all of the conveniences this provides including the ability to donate them to charity, give them as a gift, resell them on the secondary market, or of course package them with transportation services.

There are already shows and events in Massachusetts this coming summer that are using the practice of restricted ticketing, so this is an issue that will only get worse in the Bay State.

Senate Bill 94 is a practical and fair solution to this issue and we ask Massachusetts lawmakers to support this balanced approach to public policy.
(Mr. Sanborn is Chair of the Massachusetts Bus Association)